Mr. Robert Watt:

As the Deputy said, we produce guidelines in relation to how we would like to see public money being spent, whether that involves assessing the value for money of a project or accounting for the expenditure of that money and the whole variety of processes and procedures involved in that. We do that by having around 150 officers in our Department who work on the expenditure side. They are what we call "Vote officers" and they shadow their colleagues in other Departments. The process, in effect, is one of delegated sanction. The Government approves and sets out the Estimates for the year and they then go to the Dáil for debate and a vote subsequently. We send out at the end of the year what we call a "sanction letter", which states to Department X that it is permitted to spend a given amount on these subheads and it must adhere to the various procedures and so on for expenditure. During the year, we monitor that expenditure monthly, deal with issues arising from Departments and give them guidance and help. Ultimately, given the scale of the system - we have 330,000 public servants and spending of €86 billion this year - it is not possible for that to be controlled and monitored to ensure we have compliance. Otherwise, our Department would be making decisions in a centralised way in respect of a whole variety of matters and the system would not be able to function. It is basically delegated sanction. Accounting officers in Departments have legal responsibility to put in place the proper procedures consistent with the public financial procedures. They must sign their appropriation accounts when they send them to the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General to confirm that proper procedures are in place and they have adhered to the various standards. That is the system we have in place.